THOUGH the war did not come in 1809, that very year saw the precarious
peace seriously damaged by a bungled effort to patch it. Sometime about
the beginning of December, 1808, Gallatin pointed out to Erskine that
the nonintercourse law, which had just been proposed in the House,
would "remove two very important grounds of difference with Great
Britain." By excluding impartially all ships of both belligerents, it
would obliterate the anti-British discriminations of the nonimportation
act and the Chesapeake proclamation. From this he went on to suggest
that the impressment issue might cease from troubling, because the
employment of foreign seamen on American ships of war had been forbidden and now the extension of the prohibition to all American vessels
"under heavy penalties or forfeitures" was being considered. He also
intimated a willingness to tolerate the application of the Rule of 1756 to
direct trade between belligerents and their colonies; and he observed that
all points of difference between the two countries might be "smoothed
away" in this manner. Furthermore, he would apply to commercial
intercourse with Great Britain the principle of reciprocity or of the most
favored nation; and he led Erskine to believe that, with the accession of Madison, American policy would swing from a pro-French to a pro-
British course if London would only supply a fair wind. Erskine was
greatly impressed, though he saw that the American's eagerness was
inspired by a desperate desire to extricate the United States from a
terrible predicament; and he cautiously suggested to Canning the
sacrifice of the orders-in-council to purchase American good will.1 This
conversation in Washington was supplemented in London, where Canning discussed with Pinkney the delicate problem of enforcing the embargo against France should it be lifted for Britain; and, according to the
Englishman, the American agreed that the Royal Navy might undertake
the task, for otherwise the law "must be altogether nugatory."2

Canning reacted immediately to Erskine's dispatch and Pinkney's
acquiescence. On January 23, 1809, just a fortnight after receiving the
former, he directed the minister in Washington to open negotiations
for a settlement with the United States. If he sent back a favorable
report, a special minister would be hurried off to America for the formal

Notes for this page

Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.comPublication information:
Book title: The United States, Great Britain, and British North America from the Revolution to the Establishment of Peace after the War of 1812.
Contributors: A. L. Burt - Author.
Publisher: Russell & Russell.
Place of publication: New York.
Publication year: 1961.
Page number: 269.

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